1. A young couple came in, both upset and confused about the fact that the woman had become pregnant. They stressed the fact that they were on birth control, specifically they were on the pill.

However, before I could say anything, the boyfriend quietly took me aside and explained to me that he had been taking the pill instead of his girlfriend because “she had a weak stomach and couldn’t take pills…”

2. A patient came in for an STD check. She was very upset and continued to stress the fact that she only ever had one partner.

“And even if my boyfriend is sleeping with other people, it shouldn’t matter,” said the patient. “My boyfriend uses a condom every time and makes sure to wash it thoroughly after every use.”

The ER nurse asked the patient what she meant when she said her boyfriend “washes it every time”. The patient explained that her boyfriend washed the same old condom with hot water and soap before he used it. Every time.

I had to kindly explain to a grown woman that condoms are a one-time use product. She had no clue.

3. These weren’t patients of mine, but I once overheard the following conversation in the waiting room:

Man 1: My daughter is allergic to wheat.

Man 2: So she can't eat bread or anything?

Man 1: We only give her white bread.

Man 2: Oh yeah, I guess bread only has wheat if it says it on there. Like whole wheat or whatever.

Man 1: Yeah, I guess.

Man 2: So can she eat pizza?

Man 1: Only cheese pizza.

4. A lady had to have her foot amputated and was given waiver forms to sign pre-op. The patient is asked if she needs time to think about her decision. She’s surprisingly calm and nonchalant, she doesn’t seem to care much about what they do to her limb.

The doctor gets suspicious and probes a bit further, asking why she’s not more concerned. The patient says she understands that they have to operate, but that “it’s okay because the foot will grow back.”

The doctor had to explain to the woman that she is not, in fact, a salamander and that limbs do not grow back in humans.

5. More than one patient has come into my vet’s office complaining about their dog’s chest.

One man thought his male dog’s nipples were giant blood-sucking ticks. He actually tried poking at them and lightly pulling on them, complaining that “they are impossible to remove…”

A woman also came in complaining that her dog had “huge tumors” growing on its chest. Nope. Again, just nipples.

6. My favorite patient story is particularly funny because I’m not actually a doctor. I have a PhD in Fine Arts, but apparently lots of people think that just because I have a DOCTORATE of Philosophy, it means they can ask me about their disgusting medical issues…

I can NOT prescribe you medication, and I will NOT look at your rash.

7. I once had a meeting with a patient about their diet and nutritional intake. I ended up having to explain to this person that, no, Coca-cola is NOT in fact a vegetable. Just because it says "contains vegetable extracts" on the side of a can of Coke does not mean it can count as one of your “five veggies a day…”

8. Paramedic here, I have had to inform numerous people that pouring Gatorade into the mouth of unresponsive diabetics is not a good idea…

9. I’m a registered nurse, not a doctor, but here’s the story:

Patient was a newly diagnosed diabetic who needed to be taught how to inject insulin. So the diabetes educator did the good old routine of taking an orange, drawing up insulin, then injecting it into the orange. He then made the patient repeat this practice routine a few times.

The patient goes home, etc. He comes back in a week and his blood sugar is out of control. They ask him if he's been taking his insulin and he goes "of course." So they decide to ask him to demonstrate how he injects insulin. The patient goes "sure, I just need an orange."

At this point I started face palming hard because I know where this one is heading. But of course they got him a orange and a vial of insulin with a syringe. So the guy draws up the insulin correctly, takes the syringe, injects it into the orange, and then says "and then I eat the orange."

At this point I had to walk out because I nearly lost my shit right there…

10. My best friend's mom is a nurse at a hospital in an area with a lot of gang activity. More than once, she has had to explain to the family of her deceased patients that you can't get a brain transplant after getting shot in the head. Or at all really.

11. Not a doctor, but a good friend of mine is. He once told that he had to explain to one of his patients that regular bandaids do not cure anything at all, but just cover up a wound. The patient in question had tried to cure her recently diagnosed Type-II diabetes by sticking bandaids all over herself...

12. Another lady I was seeing for clinicals was diabetic, and she would come in every week with stupid high blood sugar levels (250-560ish), not knowing why they were so high.

She kept a record of everything she ate, and all her food intake seemed fine. One day, her husband came with her, which was weird, and he ninja slipped me a note while shaking my hand. It read, "Ask her about the Quiktrip slushies. She doesn't believe me that they have sugar in them." So I asked her if she was having any soda, lemonade, tea, ice cream, shakes or slushies, and she told me, like a light bulb had gone off in her head, "Well, I have been drinking about 3 of the 48oz Quiktrip slushies every day for awhile now. They're just so good! And they arn't food or drink, they're slushies! So they don't have any sugar in them, and I don't need to record them!" It was so hard to convince her that those are so full of sugar it isn't even funny.

But seriously. 3 a day on a type 2 diabetic. It was one of the stupidest things I have ever heard in my life.

13. I'm doing counseling in an STI testing clinic.

I had to explain to a young gay couple that if they both tested negative for HIV and don't cheat on each other, that they could not get infected with HIV out of nowhere. They seemed to think that unprotected gay sex spontaneously generates an HIV infection.

14. I'm not an M.D. but I am an eye doctor. Recently, I had to tell a patient that no, you should not attempt to continue wearing a contact lens that was dropped in the damn toilet! Maybe that’s where your eye infection came from?

15. A woman came in for a well baby check with her 6 month old and she had what looked like chocolate milk in the baby's bottle. The doctor started explaining to her as kindly as he could that she shouldn't be giving her baby chocolate milk, at which point she interrupts him and says "oh that isn't chocolate milk. Its coffee! He just loves it!"

-Cursethewind2/46. She was out for a run one day and when she came back she said an animal charged at her, so she cut her run short. I asked her what it looked like, and she said, "like a cow, but brown." It was a cow.

-Indeedyoursway3/46. When he told me that you regrow your virginity after six months without sex.

-DCgirl13184/46. When he told me, quite seriously, about how people with enough willpower can survive by photosynthesis.

-SlytherEEn5/46. He called lingerie "linguine". As in the pasta.

-Glitter-recession6/46. He was getting his license renewed and they asked him if he wanted to be an organ donor. He said 'no'.

When I asked why he told me it was because he didn't want the government to come knocking for any of his organs when he still needed them. He really thought that becoming an organ donor meant that, at any time, his organs could be taken.

-zeldawarriorprincess7/46. I asked him about the class he was taking at community college.

Him: It's going ok! Better than last year. I failed it twice.

Me: Must be a hard class! What's it about?

Him: Learning strategies.

He failed a class about how to learn. Twice.

-TheFascination8/46. Driving down the road and the moon is visible during the day...

Her: how is the moon out at the same time as the sun?

Me: sometimes that happens, it's not that uncommon.

Her: no they are the same thing so how can we see both at the same time?!

Me: ...The sun and the moon are 2 different things, are you serious?

Her: yea, not everyone went to college like you schoolboy.

Me: you learn this in like 2nd grade...

She was in her early 30s...

-jonthetherbon90

9/46. She threw a butter knife at a lightbulb in a crowded restaurant because she didn't like that it was flickering.

-Migz96810/46. We were making Kool-Aid. Her:"How much sugar does it need?" Me: "It says on the package." "Just tell me." "One cup." "Okay... there's only a 1/3 cup here. Where is the whole cup?" "I don't know, just use the 1/3 cup." "Well, how many scoops do I do, then?" "It's one THIRD of a cup..." "I don't know fractions, just tell me." "I'm not... going to tell you. Figure it out. It's one THIRD of a cup. How many do you think it would be?" "I don't know Logan, just tell me!" ".....Three."

The girl was 20 years old at the time. I'll never forget that.

-averagesizedhatlogan11/46. My girlfriend at the time genuinely believed that it was the headless horseman that ran though Lexington and Concord shouting "The British are coming, the British are coming!"

-DrCool201612/46. Said her dad told her the giant wind farm fans in central California were to cool things down and she believed him.

Me: when you were a kid?

Her: no, last year.

-pm_me_good_news13/46. Boyfriend took me to a fancy restaurant and we ordered wine. When the waiter came back, he gave my BF the cork to sniff. My BF grabbed it, sucked on it and licked it like a lollipop, all excited. The waiter looked uncomfortable, poured our glasses and slunk away.

-SegoLil14/46. "Is that an albino duck?" "That's a dove."

-RonyTheTurtle15/46. He decided that he didn't want to poop while staying with me in student halls, so he didn't poop for ten days and seriously messed up his digestive system.

-CharlieSabina

16/46. He wrote a love poem about my brown eyes. My eyes are green.

-hofnowhere17/46. When he answered his cell phone in the movie theater and proceeded to have a loud conversation with his dealer during the movie.

-j0m1n1n18/46. We were out having a few drinks, he said his tooth hurt, he just pulled it straight out of his mouth. I guess it was rotten anyway but holy shit, who the hell does that kind of thing?

-package_of_crips19/46. He actually believed that if you had money, it was because God thought you were a good person, and only bad people were poor. The truly ironic part of this was that he couldn't get enough work to make a living, and had to ask his wealthy father for handouts all the time.

I was trying to carefully manage the breakup since we worked down the hall from each other, when he decided to dump me because he didn't like who I voted for in the election.

-PerilousAll20/46. I found it charming and endearing that he did funny voices, made funny idiosyncratic jokes, and occasionally called me "m'lady".

-quiteatoughlass21/46. When she told me that she'd never been to France. I knew for a fact she went to Disneyland Paris every year.

"Paris isn't in France!" She insisted. We live in the UK by the way. You can literally take a train to France.

-endlesshills22/46. She called to RSVP to a surprise party. She called the person who the party was being thrown for. When I asked her how she didn't know not to do that, she said the invitation wasn't clear.

I looked at the invitation and it said in big letters "SHHHH! It's a surprise party!"

-billigesbush

23/46. He shot himself in the leg twice while cleaning his gun. Two weeks apart.

-technocassandra24/46. She thought flashing red lights on the road (as in traffic lights blinking red) meant you were entering a different time zone instead of indicating a stop sign.

-Brandito2325/46. Was on a hike and was following a trail I had read up on online. We get to a fork and I say, "Okay now we need to go north". She says, "Haven't we been this whole time?"

Confused, I look at her and ask why she says that. She replies, "North is the direction in front of you, right?"

-Tork26026/46. My girlfriend and her best friend got in an argument whether or not Canada was a language or a state.

-KappaSigSavage27/46. He insisted that women cannot be doctors, only nurses (and vice versa.) He said that the two are the exact same thing except one is male and one is female.

-Tri_Sara_Tops28/46. He thought the Nation of Islam was a place. When I explained to him this was not the case, he responded with, "agree to disagree."

-LeighDief29/46. My ex was the oldest of 6. We had been dating for about a week, both 20. I commented, "you have wide hips for a man." He replies, "it's from carrying children."

I was totally baffled til his youngest brother walked in and he picked him up and held him to the side, rested on his hip, as you do with toddlers. I had to sit him down and explain that you don't get wide hips from literally carrying children around.

-hissyhissy30/46. My ex thought that whenever I missed his call, the phone would still be ringing even after it went to voice mail. I got at least three voice mails a week that consisted of silence and the odd annoyed, impatient sigh.

-vyvyan86

31/46. I had a girlfriend in my younger days who never looked both ways before crossing the street. I asked her why, and she said she would just sue the driver if she got hit and be set for life. I asked her how she planned to do that if she was splattered all over the street, and she said she'd roll over and memorize the license plate easily.

-lovely201732/46. She got me MadLibs and when it was her turn to do a noun she asked: "What is a noun?" I said, "It's a person, place, or thing."

There was a long silence as she thought. It went on for so long that I thought she must be thinking of the best noun I had ever heard. Then she said, "place."

-tedave12333/46. We were watching a wildlife documentary, and my girlfriend asked me if bears laid eggs.

-carbonlandrover35/46. She "surprised" me by inviting her mother on our 16-day Hawaiian cruise.

-gawdybaubles36/46. My ex gf is 5'4" and petite. She wouldn't eat all day, come home, and have 3 martinis and black out. She would then claim she was allergic to alcohol.

-gnrc37/46. She tried to argue that we could get to the moon easier if we just built a spaceship that could go underwater, and flew it through the ocean to the moon during the day time rather than straight up.

-Blindjakefromstate38/46. "I'll just go get tested if I feel sick. If they find a rabie then I'll get some medicine." He had been bitten by a squirrel, also directly related to him being an idiot.

-effieokay

39/46. She thought that the past was black and white. She was serious.

-babybopp40/46. We were sitting there stargazing having a good time and all when she blurts out: "do you think that the sun is a star?"

-Nicklebrick41/46. We were playing with my dog when my boyfriend remarked "I thought he was fixed." I said, yes, of course he's fixed. "But he still has a penis." He thought fixing a dog meant removing its penis.

-UNKLEUNKLE42/46. When she stated that an onion turns black after being cut because "it's absorbing toxins from the air."

-vag-rash43/46. We went a grill house and she was amazed to learn steak came from cows. Also the fact bacon and gammon came from the same animal confused her.

-Devon-Day44/46. I cant get my girlfriend to understand that celsius and fahrenheit are the same thing. She thinks celsius is cold and fahrenheit is hot.

-Boscoethadog45/46. She claimed to have a doctorate in 'emotionology'. A doctorate.

I asked her what her masters thesis was on and what her dissertation included. She looked at me like I was eating doorknobs.

She insisted it was a legitimate study and got angry if her friends didn't call her 'doctor' when introducing her. She also kept a ledger of "unacceptable words and colours" that were not to be used in her presence. Her field of expertise proved that these words and colours oozed negativity and bred evil.

One of the worst parts was meeting this whack job gaggle of friends she had that believed all this stuff. It's like the stupid could be contracted and spread.

-sacrosanctt46/46. She said on multiple occasions that she wished she had been born in 2030 so she could live to see the year 3000.

35 Frustrated Teachers Reveal Obvious Things They've Had To Explain To A Student.

Teachers always know who are the smart kids in class, and who might need a little extra help. But sometimes there are kids that operate on a whole other level.

Here is a list of some of the funniest things teachers have had to explain to their students.

1. I was sitting in my office chatting with a few students when the lone female of the group noticed my poster of U.S. Presidents. I asked her to name those that had died in office. She was mystified. I suggested JFK. She was horrified, and said, "They killed him in his office?!"

patmcgroin2. When I was in year 10 one of the girls in my science class asked if many people died in the big bang. Year 10. I don't think anyone who was in that class has forgotten that moment.

trolollies3. When I was a camp counsellor I had a girl (she was about 13) who absolutely insisted that raccoons were made-up animals. Like unicorns, or something.

HollyHollyHey4. Had to explain to my high school kids that there are Black people in England and they are in fact, not called African Americans.

Mexkimo5. "You absolutely have to use capital letters at the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns."

I teach college.

6. More cute than sad.

I'm an esl teacher in korea. During a class one day I was discussing the word pleasure, as in "oh, it's my pleasure, no problem."

The student, a young high school student jumps back in his chair as if he understands the meaning and says "oh!! Like gollum in lord of the rings! 'My pleeaasuuure!'"

I normally don't laugh when students make a mistake but that was just too much for me to handle.

7. Learning about astronomy, there was a girl in my class who asked, "Earth, that's the one we live on, right?" Very serious.

Jewart8. I teach a high school science class. Had a class debate on space travel and got some of the AP science kids to come judge. After presenting argument, the "judges" go to ask questions. Some kid from the AP Physics class starts off his question with, "Since humans have been around for 400 billion years, why. . ."

I had to interrupt him immediately and ask for confirmation. Did he really mean 400 billion years? Yes. Yes he did.

I had to walk out of the room.

For those who don't know offhand, the universe is only about 13.5 billion years old. Our planet is about 4.5 billion years old. Modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years.

9. The one fact that my high school students were most baffled by was that the ABC song and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" have the same tune. I had to orchestrate a sing-along in the middle of Latin class to convince them to accept it and move on.

10. Every day for a week before we had standardized tests, I would have to remind my students to learn their address so that they could fill out the forms. Every single year I had at least one student show up with no idea what to put down for their address on the bubble sheet. Sometimes I could pull up their information in our database and get it for them, but it wasn't always there. I taught 15-year-olds in ninth grade.

11. I was teaching beginning string players about sharps and got some blank stares, so I then said "They're the hashtags at the beginning of the song!" A communal, "Oooooooh, I get it now!" was their response.

12. A girl in my class said she refused to eat marshmallows because they're made of poop. She had the idea that marshmallow came from old poop that has turned white. This was a 13-yr-old girl, and we had to look it up before she would believe it...and I'm pretty sure she still wasn't sure.

13. These are some things I have had to tell my college students in the past year:

- Buddhism and Islam are two separate religions. Also Hinduism is not an extinct religion.

- Divine is not spelled "devine". Yeah this one comes up a lot.

- What a thesis statement is

- Napoleon was not a Roman general

- Lying down on the ground and texting your girlfriend while in the middle of an exhibit at a major public museum is frowned upon by the guards. And also by me... but I was more... perplexed.

- When asked this question: "Should I be writing down this history stuff?" I simply answered "Yes. Yes you should." I teach history.

14. Elementary teacher here. Day one of first grade, I assigned some spelling homework. Kids fresh out of kindergarten don't know what homework is. The twinkle left their innocent little eyes as I explained it.

Not every day is a win when teaching. Even in first grade.

15. I'm getting my master's degree in Special Education. I want to do this because I am severely dyslexic. When I was diagnosed in 3rd grade, I was told I might never be able to read. I learned to read (finally) in 4th-5th grade. I got my BA in English, so you could say I made up for it.

I want to help kids in high school with learning disabilities. For now I'm a sub. I subbed a class once, about a year back. It was considered a "low functioning" class. I read the science chapter to them, like I was instructed. The entire time I had an 18-year-old kid with his headphone in, ignoring me and giving me attitude. Finally, I informed him that his lack of participation was going to go into my notes for his teacher. He got PISSED. He told me "I already know all this!!" I challenged him. "Prove it." I said. It was time to go over the end-of-chapter questions, and I wanted to show him how much not paying attention can cost you.

He answered EVERY. QUESTION. CORRECTLY. And in explicit detail, might I add. I was floored. I was a new sub at the time. I would NEVER do this now, but after I assigned individual work, I came up to him in private and said "Why are you here?! This is a SPED class. WHY?!"

He simply said, "I can't read." It took me a while to believe him, but really, He could not read. That day he asked me for a ride home, and even though I was not supposed to, I agreed. His home turned out to be a homeless shelter. He had been struggling for YEARS under the care of his grandmother with alzheimer's. His parents were gone. Drug addicts. His grandma was now too far gone to live with. I tutored him for free for several months after this. Smartest kid I ever met. He was reading at a 5th grade level when I had to leave him. I got him a new, fantastic tutor before I left.

So to answer your question, the saddest, most obvious thing I ever had to tell a student? "You're smart Matthew. You're the smartest kid I know. You know what? You're going to be amazing." He was convinced he was an idiot. I'm convinced he's amazing.

And he is. Mark my words.

16. Plagiarism. I wouldn't have even thought to look for it - after all, these were high school seniors I was dealing with - except that one girl who'd copied from Wikipedia had left the formatting in, and the cross-page hyperlinks were still bright blue.

17. One day in 6th grade we were going over the periodic table. My teacher had a giant table hung up on the wall and she started pointing out a few easy ones like gold and iron. One of my classmates, completely serious, said, "Where's Redstone (as in Minecraft Redstone) on the periodic table? "

18. I teach swim lessons. This girl could swim pretty well. We learn breathing to our side. Her face is in the water and I say "breathe." This girl took a breath underwater! I had to explain when I say "breathe" I mean above the water.

19. I had a girl in my grade 10 history class, and she was 20 years old. She wrote me a short essay arguing that Quebec shouldn't separate from Canada. Her main argument was that if it did indeed separate, then people would have to take a boat to get there because of all the water that would be in the way. I wish I was making this up

20. There's a lab we do involving elements and their properties in freshmen science. Students go around to different stations, each with has its own unique element.

They test/observe the elements for different properties (luster, magnetism, electrical conductivity, stuff like that). Two years ago I had a class where after finishing at the first station, I told them all to "rotate stations clockwise," and I had a student seriously ask me "which way is clockwise?" I was both dumbfounded and saddened by that, but I guess if you think about it a lot of students don't wear watches anymore…

21. Sooo...how is a country different from a continent?' He was 19 and a father of two.22. That when you pee you are supposed to aim for the toilet, not the floor, the garbage can, and for goodness sake please stop peeing your pants! You are in second grade! Also your poop is to go inside the toilet, not on the wall and how in the hell did you think to fling it on the ceiling!? Lastly, when you shit yourself in the second grade and act like nothing happened, everyone knows...everyone!

23. My sister is always reminding her 6th grade students that deodorant is a useful tool to help you not smell bad. She often had to open the classroom's windows because the boys would smell so bad.

24. I teach English in a languages school. One day, after class, I was talking to a student about music, and showed him some rap songs, which are very fast and hard to sing... He then said 'they sound like squirrels speaking', I laughed and remembered about a vine video in which a squirrel speaks very fast saying something like "thank you for these delicious walnuts you're a very nice person I promise to come back tomorrow... Etc", and showed him that video... And to my surprise he asked me if "squirrels actually speak that fast", I thought he was joking but he then said that "in the movie Alvin and the chipmunks they also speak very fast, do they actually speak like that?"

You should've seen his face and reaction when I told him that animals don't speak, and it's just a dubbed audio. He couldn't believe that. And I honestly couldn't believe myself what I had just witnessed this guy do... He's 22 years old.

25. West is towards the left of the map and East is towards the right.

College freshman.

26. As a camp counsellor for an overnight swim camp, I have had to stand outside of a bathroom stall and explicitly explain to a girl how to properly insert a tampon for the first time. Every. Single. Summer.

27. Not a teacher, but a female classmate in Technical Drafting classes came to me for help as none of her drawings seemed ok. I pointed out that her dimensions were all wrong (short) by one unit, and it dawned on me that she was measuring from the ONE onwards on her ruler.

I told her she needed to start counting from ZERO onwards and she said that was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. -"Zero doesn't count, have you heard of the word zero value?"

She left to go ask someone else.

28. During a sex ed class I had to explain a 17 y/o student that she could not get infected with VH1 ... But HIV

29. Every year I have to explain repeatedly that any email address with body parts, expletives, or slurs were not appropriate to put on college applications. Even if "iheartboobies" is a breast cancer reference it's not acceptable.

30. That men and women have the same number of ribs. Lots of my students seem to think men have one fewer, thanks to their churches (or, at least I think that's where that belief comes from - it's certainly not taught in school). Some refuse to believe me, which I always find surprising.

31. "Well it's not like Obama is REALLY our first Black president. Reagan was black, right?"

32. My mom teaches second grade, and she had to show someone in her class what an apple was. Like the fruit.

33. I had to tell a graduating senior that he shouldn't write his entire final essay in the passive voice. He was graduating from college.

34. It's midterm, you've failed three tests. No. You can't get an A in the course.

I have to tell students this every semester.

35. During the last year of high school, I tutored a group of 6-9 year olds in after school hours to get them up to the level of their classmates.

One of them was a lovely little girl who called all colors "blue", and absolutely refused to believe that colors all had different names.

I met her parents once at a parent-teacher interview, and gently brought up that their daughter would do really well if she had some home help with color recognition. Her mother laughed and said "Oh, that! It's too hard to expect someone to just remember every color, so that's the way we do it at home!"